New York is certainly a great place to live, with opportunities aplenty—particularly in the tech world.
Our New York Magento meetups are hosted in New York, and we attract a lot of company here that we may not attract if we lived anywhere else.
Below you can see all of our posts related to this beautiful city. We write about the ecommerce meetup, in addition to all of the powerful companies that are based in New York.
We have posts related to interesting miscellania, as you can see from “Who Is Calling Me From 646-588-4643,” a little jokey blog post we wrote about a desperate recruiter who was persistently calling us.
WHY CHOOSE HARA PARTNERS FOR YOUR MAGENTO DEVELOPMENT?
Experience
Hara Partners has extensive experience with Magento – we’ve been working closely with them since Magento first hit the market in 2007. The Hara professionals first reverse-engineered the Magento software in early 2008 and ever since we’ve been creating, customizing and integrating for our 250+ satisfied customers.
Expertise
The Hara Partners staff consist of a core carefully cultivated experts from fields spanning the business and eCommerce development spectra, and their hand-picked teams. Having experts from across all of business permits us to take a more holistic approach to Magento development in which we examine your business across its entire face – from marketing and sales strategies, to design and development and all the way to market analysis and long term planning.
Partnership Approach
At Hara Partners we ascribe to the belief that without listening to the customer we’ll never be able to make them happy; and so we place a heavy emphasis on transparency and collaboration. In fact, you’ll play an integral role throughout the entire process, tasked with brainstorming, strategizing and decision making duties, as well as reviewing and okaying strategies, blueprints and mock-ups at carefully chosen checkpoints. And we’ll take pains to ensure our relationship doesn’t end when the project has been completed, instead we’ll be there to ease you through updates, help with new feature training and troubleshooting, and to handle any future development issues, whether they be business oriented or technical in nature.
The world’s second highest ecosystem is only NYC are performing more than 326, 000 jobs every year. The highest strength report is performing in robotics, health, advanced manufacturing, life science subsectors and the cybersecurity.
In 2018, strategic Startup features of GSER have a policy and investment plans inside the 10,000 foundations around 45 cities – in which including the New York City.
New York City Economic Development Corporation
New York, NY – New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), announced the releasing date of GSER, 2018. It’s an analysis of 24 countries over the 60 Startup ecosystem produced by the GEN (Global Entrepreneurship Network) and the Startup Genome. In 2018 Istanbul, the GSER launched this system all over the world.
A detailed look at which strengthen of different growing New York City subsectors are involved: Health and Life Science, Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, cybersecurity Highlights are included.
New York City considering Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics
New York City considering the activity of 3D painting, with the help of 2.7% market share all around the world, also the city launched program and series of the network just to increase the support startups, advanced manufacturing technology and help the manufacture companies.
New York City Health and Life Sciences
The ecosystem is supportive with the help of academic medical center, local assets and health funding research of $1.6 billion National institutes.
New York City Cybersecurity
The ecosystem of New York City has more than 100 cybersecurity companies, a Startup opening of offices and $1 billion investment in VC.
New York City plans to create 1000,000 good jobs
The above three subsectors are the focus plan of New York City works plan just to create 1000,000 good jobs for the future 10 years forecasting. Become a part of this plan, City launched plan $30 million is giving for the growth of fuel in the cybersecurity industry of New York City.
New York City is struggling in the tech industry. The financial capital of the world is having trouble getting tech companies to do business here. This struggle is partly due to the tech boom in Silicon Valley. Now this is not to say that there isn’t a tech industry in New York, there are thousands of jobs in web design and development. After all, Union Square Design is based in New York. Also the city has pulled in $1.94 billion in this industry. However, that is quarter of what companies made in Silicon Valley.
What is New York Doing?
What is New York doing to help curve the tech industry back to New York and away from California? There is a startup called Tech:NYC, which is a non-profit that is trying to get more tech companies to come to New York City. The company works as a lobbyist firm to help with laws, rents, and prices to keep tech companies here. The Executive Director of Tech:NYC, Julie Samuels, has helped work with companies to stay in the city.
“New York is in a competition to be where startups are going to locate and bigger tech companies are going to grow second and third offices,” Samuels said.
Have These Tactics Worked?
Have these tactics worked to keep companies from moving to California? Yes and no. The problem with the city struggling to keep startups is startups are risky. Those companies aren’t looked for when venture capital firms are looking for clients. They look for a broad portfolio, not someone who started last month. So there might not be anything to worry about.
However, there are people who disagree,“Big exits really haven’t happened yet in New York,” said Fred Wilson, cofounder of Union Square Ventures. “It’s a valid criticism.”
Conclusion
The conclusion I draw from all of this paranoia is that we will have to wait and see if these startups actually stay in the city or move to greener pastures.
The worries over minimum wage increases have e-commerce companies cringing. There has been research done which says the increase in wages won’t hurt the industry. Since e-commerce has a lower labor cost, around 20%, these companies thought they could escape having to spend a lot more money. Also e-commerce companies are very small and bare bones, so it should hurt over all cost. This thought stopped much of the worry. However, this thought was wrong, now that areas are starting to apply the minimum wage increase to work. Now that the initial research was wrong, the next question is how could they have been so wrong?
The Research in E-Commerce Forget
The research in the e-commerce industry had forgotten was the internet and the sales industry. The younger generations such as Millennials and Generation Y are changing the retail industry. They no longer go into stores and do not have a lot of money. These two aspects are shrinking the retail industry. The industry is already shrinking due to online sales and may not be able to sustain its workers. This is forcing retailers to raise prices, which will hurt the e-commerce industry.
According to Forbes, the internet is losing retail stores a lot of business. Allen Questrom, an expert in these industries says,
“Retailers are in an existential bind: The Internet is for the most part, a money-losing business, but stores have no choice but to be in it, Questrom said Merchants are diverting capital from a moneymaking business [brick-and-mortar stores], and dumping big dollars into their money-losing online and mobile businesses, he said. A recent study from HRC advisory supports that notion, revealing that e-commerce, including the steep costs of fulfilling online orders, is chipping away at retail profit margins.”
It seems since the internet these giant stores and industries have been in decline. Now they are in a strange place and the future isn’t looking good.
3 E-Commerce startups in New York City everyone should keep there eyes on. There has been some talk of New York City has been lagging behind Silicon Valley in the tech industry, but these startups prove that this is just talk. After all, the reason people are saying these things about New York is because it has a lot of startups that don’t make it. Whereas, in Silicon Valley they had startups like Google and others that shot right to the top. But in New York no marketing firm in their right mind will give a startup a lot of money. This makes financial and economic sense but, it might be too conservative to have something like Google happen. However, here are some startups located in New York that have promise.
1.Upworthy
Upworthy is a startup that started a little over a year ago in New York City. The website’s mission statement is to make web content that matters go viral. The website is focused on empowering important content on the web.
2.The Muse
The Muse started in 2011, so it is only five years old, but has made a huge splash. The starters of this startup were three women who decided to start their own career development site. They started it because they were sick and tired of sites like Monster and others which they believed were agonizing sites to find anything on. SInce its launch, The Muse has help over 2 million people find a job. They were successful by asking the question, “What do I want to do with my Life.”
3.Buzzfeed
Buzzfeed is a startup from New York. I was surprised too. It is hard to believe that Buzzfeed was once a startup since it has blown up into a major social media website.I mean on Facebook Buzzfeed has almost 16 million likes.
Klenzoid is an industrial water treatment company offering programs that substantially reduce energy, water and chemical costs for steam boilers and cooling water systems.
The company recently decided to use Netsuite CRM to develop, customize, and host specific applications. According to Michael Cairns, this decision has allowed Klenzoid to improve their operational efficiencies by more than 40 per cent.
Klenzoid now has live access to customer data, and in a big data world is able to run lots of calculations. This is clearly helping to support the organic growth that Klenzoid is experiencing.
Not stopping there, Klenzoid plans to bring in further data acquisition streamlining to be even quicker in their response to customers.
In the cloud, Klenzoid saw an opportunity to serve their customers more effectively not so much by increasing their field staff but more so by investing in a system customization that would improve the quality and timeliness of the services that they deliver.
The customization of the NetSuite platform has had a huge payoff for both Klenzoid and its customers. As a golden rule of business, Cairns aptly stated, “If you do the right thing – eventually the market will reward you as well.”
Prior to the transition to NetSuite, Cairns describes how there were many different branches of information in Klenzoid, and none talked to the other. Now, with its innovative approaches, the NetSuite system provides information for key decision making; it highlights sales issues, opportunities, from beginning to end; there is one stream of data – from sales, to accounting to data on energy – all on one system.
Klenzoid’s use of NetSuite has also allowed them to optimize their own operations and develop innovations with customers in mind. The new design and capability that comes with NetSuite allows Klenzoid to use customization that forged greater connectivity than had ever been previously possible. As a golden rule of business, Cairns aptly stated, “If you do the right thing – eventually the market will reward you as well.”
Thank you again for the great turn out last month, on January 8 for our e-commerce Meetup. Our next Meetup is almost here and we wanted to provide a review of the last one.
Credit Card Merchant Processing
Tom Waters from BAMS (Bank Associates Merchant Services) presented what his company can offer to merchants by explaining how credit card processing works and the fees that are associated with different transaction. Tom took a historical take and walked us through concepts and laws that changed the credit card landscape over the years. And the good news is brought down fees drastically over time.
Some highlights from the talk include (and I apologize if these only include the ones we remember, but please post comments and questions below, or contact us):
1. Rates have been broken down into a great matrix of different scenarios. Most people are familiar with AmEx vs. Visa/MasterCard rates, as well as debit cards vs. credit card, corporate or rewards cards, and how the rates differ. However, most people still believe there are only 4-5 rates, or they are given 4 rates by their merchant processor or bank.
Fact is that there is a specific interexchange rate for almost every transaction, which can factors in in-person vs. over the phone, card type, issuer, etc.
Often times the low rates are not passed on by the merchant processor, but pulled together into 3-4 groups.
2. Organizations such as Paypal, Square, even American Express are not banks and thus do not need to adhere to the numerous regulations of banks. This can have a lot of advantages for these organizations, which they can pass on to merchants and customers. Even Groupon launched a service called Groupon Payments to provide savings to its merchants.
What it all means to you?
3. You should not enter into a contract that binds you to a processor, and insist on early termination rights. You may also want to consider these non-bank institutions. Often times they can be very competitive with low transaction volume, while a dedicated merchant processor becomes less expensive with greater volume. BAMS for example charges a small processing fee on top of the interexchange rate, which results in very competitive pricing.
Value-added Services by BAMS
BAMS can help merchants with charge back monitoring and handling. BAMS also offers its IRIS (IRIS – Integrated Reporting is Simple) platform, which can help gain quick oversight of your business and identify problems.
IRIS – Integrated Reporting is Simple
Please add comments to this post and feel free to ask any questions about merchant processing. Tom is extremely knowledgeable and we at Hara Partners would love to provide any answers for you.
Macaron Cafe, a long-time Hara Partners client, was elected to be the coffee destination near Penn Station.
Coffee Subway Map with Macaron Cafe a Hara Partners client
TimeOut New York created this subway map of the go to best coffee places in the city, and Macaron Cafe takes the crown for the 34th Street stop of the 1, 2, 3 lines and LIRR station.
Find out if your favorite coffee joint made the map and let us know.
As I’ve mentioned to you before one of the most important things to take care of for your Magento eCommerce website is hiring a quality Magento Developer. The Magento platform is extremely complex and notoriously finicky and it will up to your developer to tame the system for you so you can capitalize on Magento’s famed flexibility and endless customization potential. Hara Partners, in New York, is an ideal Magento Development partner, boasting loads of expertise and experience, for companies of any size.
Why choose Hara Partners for your Magento Development?
Experience
Hara Partners has extensive experience with Magento – we’ve been working closely with them since Magento first hit the market in 2007. The Hara professionals first reverse-engineered the Magento software in early 2008 and ever since we’ve been creating, customizing and integrating for our 250+ satisfied customers.
Expertise
The Hara Partners staff consist of a core carefully cultivated experts from fields spanning the business and eCommerce development spectra, and their hand-picked teams. Having experts from across all of business permits us to take a more holistic approach to Magento development in which we examine your business across its entire face – from marketing and sales strategies, to design and development and all the way to market analysis and long term planning.
Partnership Approach
At Hara Partners we ascribe to the belief that without listening to the customer we’ll never be able to make them happy; and so we place a heavy emphasis on transparency and collaboration. In fact, you’ll play an integral role throughout the entire process, tasked with brainstorming, strategizing and decision making duties, as well as reviewing and okaying strategies, blueprints and mock-ups at carefully chosen checkpoints. And we’ll take pains to ensure our relationship doesn’t end when the project has been completed, instead we’ll be there to ease you through updates, help with new feature training and troubleshooting, and to handle any future development issues, whether they be business oriented or technical in nature.
Full Service
Hara Partners is a full-service, all-in-one, entirely in-house Magento Development machine. We’ve helped past clients with:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Magento-Optimized Hosting
Content Delivery Network (CDN) Services
Creation, integration and customization of Magento extensions, add-ons and themes
Magento Support
Site Auditing with Health Check Scalability
3rd party integration specialists – we’ll make Magento work with anything.
Design
Content/Media (Audio, Video, and Text) Creation
UI/UX and Information Architecture Experts
Branding and Image Specialists
Strategic Planning and Market analysis
Best Practices
Hara Partners is ideally situated at the crossroads of business, technology and design so we are in the perfect position to advise our clients of what they need to do and how they must do it if they want to succeed. Our experienced project managers will advise you every step of the way providing the industry norms and best practices information you’ll need to make the most informed decisions you can. Don’t trust your future to just anyone – choose Hara Partners and get what you deserve.
Paul Demery, Internet Retailer CTO, recently compiled some telling observations on the successes and challenges associated with same-day delivery for e-tailers. Below, a summary of his major points. This is Part I in a two-part series; be sure to check out Part II for the full story!
The latest trend in online retail seeks to appropriate a long-held brick-and-mortar advantage: receiving goods the same day you shop for them. Sure, there hasn’t exactly been an uptick in consumer demand for same-day delivery, but retailers are taking the usual “customers don’t know what they want yet” approach here; in tandem with delivery companies, they’re striving to shave overhead low enough to drum up interest. Some are even taking serious risks in an effort to jump the gun.
Spreading Fast
Case in point: UK retail chain Argos, a subsidiary of Home Retail Group, experimented with free same-day delivery for online orders just before last Christmas. The offer was made available to about half of its customers, spanning 50+ UK towns. Results were modest and costly, but ultimately deemed effective in terms of expanding the customer base. In the opinion of Brian McCarthy, Argos director of home delivery, “the whole market of competition is changing […] loyalty to brand is less; loyalty to price is stronger.”
Argos collaborates with London-based Shutl in the delivery process. Shutl dispatches online orders to local courier services, factoring availability, location, and performance record into the decision. With outposts in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago—along with planned operations in 17 more North American cities this year—the company is poised to ride the same-day delivery wave.
The landscape is populating rather quickly. USPS launched Metro Post last November in San Francisco, testing the waters with 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. and other retailers. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. debuted Walmart to Go in five metro areas, delivering online orders by truck. The trend gained speed with eBay Now, a mobile app being tested by major retailers in New York and San Francisco, designed to coordinate local courier pick-up and delivery services. And, of course, Amazon.com Inc. has had a successful same-day delivery service in multiple U.S. markets for a few years now.
A Wrench in the Gears
In an atmosphere of stiff competition, many retailers feel compelled to at least explore same-day delivery to remain viable amongst such strong growth. But it isn’t all sunshine and roses; according to experts, the jury’s still out on whether it actually wins customers or pads profits. Compared with one- or two-day delivery and/or in-store pickup—a safer option for retailers with fulfillment centers in major markets—same-day delivery demands a premium, which naturally gets passed on to the customer. These fees average $10 for most orders, which turns out to be enough to scare many customers away. Once that threshold is passed, they’d much rather opt to inconvenience themselves by picking the product up in person. When Moosejaw Mountaneering introduced same-day delivery in Chicago and Denver-Boulder for order placed up until 5 PM Christmas Eve, no one ended up using the $14.99 service. CEO Eoin Comerford speculates that a lack of heavy promotion and customer trust may have had something to do with the lackluster results.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
That hasn’t stopped dedicated entrepreneurs, though. Shutl’s investors include UPS Inc., European delivery service GeoPost, and venture capital firms e.ventures, Hummingbird Ventures, and Notion Capital. That’s $5M+ in investments since October put toward marketing in the U.S. and Canada—not too shabby.
And the service itself isn’t stagnant, either. Seeking to one-up Amazon, the next generation of same-day delivery providers is expanding the traditional window from 7 AM to noon to 2 PM and beyond. Walmart.com, by comparison, allows shoppers to choose a four-hour delivery window, even late at night.
Same-Day Delivery in Action
Here’s a sampling of typical same-day delivery services for online orders:
• Shutl: Scheduled to launch Q1 in NYC, Chicago, and SF. Delivery available 24/7, or when stores or warehouses are open. Fee set by retailers; Shutl recommends < 5% order value.
• USPS Metro Post: Customers in SF can order online until 2 PM, receiving deliveries 4-8 PM. Fee close to standard ground shipping, which for many orders is ≤$10.
• eBay Now: Consumers in NYC and SF test markets can have a personal shopper pick up the items ordered from a retailer’s store and have them delivered 9 AM-6 PM most days, with extended holiday hours. Fee=$5, with $25 minimum order.
• Walmart to Go: Customers in five major metro areas—Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, San Jose/San Francisco, Denver—can order online until noon, then choose a 4-hour delivery window running to late in the evening. Fee=$10.
• Amazon Local Express Delivery: Order deadlines range from 7 AM-noon in 10 major cities—Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Seattle, and Washington—for delivery up to 8 PM. Fee=$8.99 per order or $3.99 on eligible items for Amazon Prime members, a program that also offers two-day shipping for an annual fee of $79.
